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Mortal Kombat Getting A Reboot?

For quite awhile now there's been speculation and talk about another Mortal Kombat movie to follow the entertaining first one and the abysmal (but still fun :P ) sequel. The last we heard on that front was word from Chris Casamassa (who played Scorpion in the first Mortal Kombat movie) that a third movie was on the way. However, that was back in July and at that time he said he was set to start shooting another Mortal Kombat last September. Well, September has come and gone and here we are, sans Mortal Kombat 3.

The guys over at Bloody-Disgusting have received word straight from Warner Bros. that the Mortal Kombat franchise is getting the reboot treatment, with a writer already attached in the form of Oren Uziel. Uziel hasn't written anything that's been made, but his Shimmer Lake screenplay did land on Hollywood's 2009 black list, which features the best screenplays never to be filmed. Unless that screenplay is a balls-to-the-wall action film, then I don't see why they would have chosen Uziel for this. Now I know Mortal Kombat doesn't need a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer to pen its script but at least they could have chosen someone with better (or any) experience writing action flicks...

There's no other info on the Mortal Kombat redo for the time being, leaving us fans to speculate about what we want to see in a reboot of the franchise. Well, personally I'd like to see them work in a bit more (read: LOTS more) graphic violence during the fight sequences. After all, the highlight of the original games (which were very controversial when they came out at first) were the fatalities at the end of the fight, which ranged from pulling your opponent's heart out to freezing them and pulling out their spinal cord. I realize they can't show that explicitly on-screen, trying to give the Saw franchise a run for its money, but still, I would like to see the action be a bit more badass and brutal than the campy stuff we got with the previous two movies.

I liked the tournament setting and plot of the first Mortal Kombat and wouldn't mind if they recycled that story. After all, that was the focus of the original game - a tournament - and not the silly nonsense seen in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Just focus on one character (it probably should be Liu Kang again), make him enter the tournament and have 90 minutes of kick-ass fighting. It's not rocket science!

As for the idea of another Mortal Kombat in general, whether it should be a reboot or a continuation - we all know the rule: video game movies suck. Now there exceptions to that rule (the first Mortal Kombat being one of them) but generally speaking there hasn't been any movie based on a video game that has risen to any sort of level of greatness. The law of averages says it will happen at some point - will this Mortal Kombat project be that movie? Anything is possible but somehow I doubt it.

Are you glad Warner Bros. is seemingly rebooting the Mortal Kombat franchise? Or would you like to have seen a third installment? And do you agree the reboot should be more brutal like the video game?

Stay tuned for more on this project as news comes out. Until then, just as a bonus, here's a funny video from the "smosh" guys over at Youtube - "Mortal Kombat!"